Categories

Ditto marks

This may be obvious to everyone but the use of quote marks (which I take to mean "Ditto") does not seem to mean that. For example, in Llawhadden/Pembs Page 7 field 4 is called Great Croft and is 19 acres 1 Rood 10 perches. the next field 4 is called Little meadow and has the area " 1 rood 10 perches. By name and appearance it is much smaller so is clearly not 19 acres. How will the automatic system interpret the quote marks. I think in the above case the quotes stand for blank.

Comments

In columns with figures, the ditto marks are just placeholders. It represents "this box is intentionally blank". I suppose it originally served to satisfy both tax collector and tax payer that no extra figures had been slipped in at a later date.

After attending a Cynefin open day, I left with the impression that these were ditto marks; but doing the arithmetic for a small holding, the numbers just didn't add up.

But in other columns such as Field Use, does 'do' or " , mean same as in previous row ?If so, the computer might have trouble interpreting such entries as 'Arable and do' where the previous row had 'Pasture'. I interpret this as 'Arable and Pasture' But not sure what the computer makes of this.

Thanks for spotting this. I agree. We haven't programmed it yet. My plan is that dittos in text fields will be interpreted as "as above" but in numeric fields they should be blank or zero, that's what arithmetic tests suggest.

In Clydau/Pembs there are many "partial dittos". Example: Park Syth followed on the next line by " canol, followed on the next line by " mawr, followed by about 10 more similar. I have taken this to mean that only Park is copied, otherwise the names would get longer and longer. I have expanded all these as it is probably easier for a human to interpret what is intended.